Social Fanzine #17

Social Fanzine #17

Even though Instagram has brutally cloned Snapchat, there has been no dent on the popularity of the little white ghost as of now. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom admitted it himself, that Snapchat deserved all the credit for Stories feature. But has Instagram really managed to kill the competition? To answer that question, Yahoo Finance reached out to App Annie, a third-party mobile app tracking firm that measures app downloads and engagement on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The answer appears to be no, at least so far, despite some anecdotal evidence and the flurry of initial coverage discussing Instagram Stories’ similarity to Snapchat’s My Story. The long repercussions are still to be revealed, but it is quite evident that Snapchat is not going down without a fight.

Twitter seemed to be having some hiccups since Tuesday morning on its browser version. The social channel has been going down intermittently with users having issues reaching the platform at all. Ironically, people had a gala time outing their frustration over Twitter’s unavailability in twitter itself.

Silent since long, Google has jumped into one-to-one video calling now with its latest smartphone app, Google Duo. The app is simple, minimal, fast, easy to use, and devoid of complicated bells and whistles. You tap on the face of the person you want to call, they answer, and you have a one-on-one video chat going. However, only time will tell if the entire effort is bold or timid and where will Duo stand in the world of face timing and sky-ping.